


Upside-Down, in Pieces

by gumbridge



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-23
Updated: 2011-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:30:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbridge/pseuds/gumbridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>String theory says that there are many, many universes. In one of them Hanna died a long time ago, chest torn open. In that universe a man was stabbed in the back and lived</i>. Three pieces set in the same AU, where canon... didn't happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU was initially written for [this prompt](http://sugar-magic.livejournal.com/1903.html?thread=28783#t28783) at the old HINABN fic meme on LJ in March of 2010. So it's a year old! _Take from that what you will._ The first two chapters are about what happens to Hanna and the zombie in this world; the last is about Conrad and Worth.

There's a knocking coming from the door: not unheard of at this time of night, but certainly unusual.

And unusual in this line of business tended to mean one of three things: a case the client wanted to keep hush-hush, a case involving some of the differently alive members of society, or an angry ex-client with a pair of very large, very angry bodyguards.

Before answering, he made sure his crowbar was where it should be, neatly propped against the doorjamb.

When he opens the door, though, the makeshift weapon turns out to not be necessary: the guy at the door -- kid, really, he couldn't be even twenty -- was small, harmless-looking, and green.

It isn't the small or the harmless-looking that relaxed him; he'd been attacked plenty of times by things that had been both. Zombies, though, were very rarely threats. They could have inhuman strength, but that was tempered by their stiff, brittle flesh and personalities muted by (un)death.

So. The zombie is all right, probably.

"Hello," he says; "can I help you with anything?"

The zombie looks up (and up, and up) at him, then back down to the card in his hand -- orange and black, and how many years ago had his cards looked like that? -- and back up again.

"Yeah," the zombie says. Its eyes glow blue in the dark corridor. "I think you can."

When he's seated behind his old, battered desk and the zombie is seated in the less-old, less-battered chair he keeps around for clients, he tips his head to the side.

"So what can I help you with?" he prompts.

The zombie tips his eyes upwards and pushes his glasses into a better position on his nose: a quick, fluid motion, a muscle-memory holdover from a life long forgotten. "According to my gravestone, my name is -- was? is there an appropriate tense for this -- my name is Hanna Falk Cross, and I died ten years ago, when I was eighteen. Don't remember any of it, though."

"And do you want to find out more about your life pre-death?" A line furrows his brow. "If you have your birth and death dates, I'll tell you now, you don't need me. You need City Hall records, a computer with Internet access, and a library with a good set of archives."

But the zombie -- Hanna -- is already shaking his head. "No, no, I checked that out already, found my obit and everything. There's something else I want to know more."

He raises an eyebrow, and Hanna pulls up his (vivid blue-and-black, not-suited-for-funerals) shirt. There's a huge cut that slashes itself across Hanna's chest five times, starting at the collarbone and ending at the bellybutton, looking for all the world like the handiwork of some Zorro turned Jack the Ripper. What look like dull old industrial-grade staples hold the flaps of skin closed: the body hadn't had time to scab the wound over before death, and afterwards nobody had bothered to sew it up properly. The detective is reminded of the neat stitches in his back, covering a scar nearly as bad, and shivers.

The zombie jabs a finger at the wound and all the faded black marks around it, symbols almost like tic-tac-toe boards crowding against the edges of the cut.

"I don't care right now about the details of my life," the zombie says, firm. There's obvious emotion in Hanna's voice, a crowded combination of vehement anger and frustration and curiousity; before death, he must have had a strong personality, for it to come out so clearly even as a zombie. "What I want to know is who fucking murdered me and left my stomach cut up like a Thanksgiving dinner."

The detective can feel the look on his face gentling, all by itself. "I'm sorry," he says without really meaning, and his grip on his pen tightens, because the look on Hanna's face is collapsing from angry into dejected and world-weary. It isn't a look that sits right on Hanna's face, not one that should be there.

He wavers a moment, questions turning themselves over in his mind.

But then he catches Hanna smoothing his shirt back down over his (grey-green, too-thin) torso. He sighs, pulls at the knot in his already-loosened tie and forces himself into a decision.

"Where are you staying, Hanna?" he asks. "If you don't have somewhere out of the rain, you can sleep or not sleep or whatever on the couch in the back." He waves a hand at the door behind the desk, the one that leads to the trio of little rooms where he sleeps and sometimes cooks.

If Hanna's eyes hadn't already been (literally) glowing, he would have said they lit up at the offer.

"Oh, wow, thanks," Hanna is saying, "I don't need to sleep, or at least I don't think I do -- if you helped me out with this and let me stay out of the rain here, I will totally make you breakfast every day, you are like my knight in shining armor, Gallahad--"

"Woah," he says, cutting Hanna off with a smile. "Gallahad?"

"Yeah," Hanna says. "Gallahad! White horse, shining armor, King Arthur's round table."

The detective looks at Hanna and shakes his head. "Well," he says, "it's not the worst name I've ever been called by, I'll give you that."

Hanna just beams, thousand-watt grin barely dimmed by a decade of rot.


	2. Chapter 2

He feels awkward around Hanna, unwieldy and too-tall. Hanna's shoulders are broad, but he's got to be at least a full head shorter than him, and Hanna's _thin_ , inhumanly so -- it seems like all the water in his body's evaporated, leaving him in undeath with too many angles, cheekbones you could sharpen a knife on.

The detective knows he's tall, sure, and he's been used to it since he got over puberty, but something about Hanna makes him feel like he's thirteen again, like his limbs are unexpectedly long and not entirely under his control.

Hanna's curled up in the corner of his sofa, knees pulled up to his nose, feet in their fluorescent orange socks digging into the cushion.

It's been more than three weeks since that foggy night when Hanna showed up at his door, almost a month, and all the searching they've done hasn't turned up any leads. It's obvious that Hanna's getting discouraged. The detective doesn't know what to tell him: some cases go slower than others, some cases just don't ever work out. Especially when the trail on those cases are ten years cold. He wants to encourage Hanna, speak some sentence that'll raise the slump in his bony shoulders.

But life isn't that easy, and he's never been one for polite fictions.

".....I'm sorry," he finally says, hesitantly. "I know this is taking longer than you'd like."

Hanna looks up at that, the brooding lines on his forehead smoothing themselves out. "You don't need to be sorry," he says; "none of this is your fault." _This_ seems to encompass not only their difficulties with the case, but Hanna's unlife, the hole in his memory, his cause of death.

The detective shifts on his feet, walks over to the sofa from where he's been standing propped against the doorway, steam from his cup of coffee making a damp patch on his shirt. He sits down next to Hanna, put his coffee down on the floor (and he really should buy a coffee table one of these days), and sighs.

"Hanna," he says, and it comes out tentative, halting. "I'm not saying it's my fault, I'm not saying it's your fault. All I'm saying is... Well, I guess what I'm saying is that I know the investigation is taking a long time, and I know it's hard on you, so I wish it wasn't. I wish I could say that from here on out it'll get easier, but these things just aren't predictable."

"I know that," says Hanna, with an expression treading the line between melancholy and a pout. "It's just.... I guess I was hoping it'd be like detectives in fiction, yanno? Sherlock Holmes busts in all, _it is elementary my dear Watson_ , solving the case in five minutes."

The detective has to crack a smile at that. "I'm afraid I'm no Sherlock Holmes, Hanna. I don't have the right hat for it."

"How about Dick Tracy, then?" Hanna asks, and finally the zombie is looking a little more animated. "I bet a fedora's easier to find around here than a deerstalker."

"But the bright yellow suit might be a little harder," says the detective. "I don't remember if Sam Spade wore a hat, do you?"

"I think he had a hat, but he was also a jerk."

That startles the detective into a laugh, the noise sudden in the still apartment. "And I don't have the right coat to be Harry Dresden... I guess that's why it's taking so long, I'm just not wearing the right clothing."

Hanna definitely perks up at that, the banked glow in his eyes blazing right up again. Even his hair looks excited, orange waves and white tufts standing on end. "You know the Dresden Files?" he asks.

"Yeah," says the detective, and rolls the kinks out of his neck. "Though I'm feeling like I should be more surprised that you know the series."

"I spent a lot of time in the library," says Hanna, defensive. "It wasn't _all_ just looking at old newspapers on the microfiche."

"I don't blame you," the detective says, and then, "oh-- I wonder, then, if you haven't seen the TV series."

Hanna blinks at that, and comes out of his curled position, to better stare at his companion on the sofa. "They made a TV show out of it?" he demands. " _Can we watch it?_ "

In answer, the detective levers himself up off his seat and goes to fetch his laptop from where it's still sitting on his desk in the office. It's a heavy old thing, but it's a steady workhorse and hasn't failed on him yet. He brings it and the visitor's chair into the back room, what he'd call his living room if it had more furniture than a sofa and a pair of bookshelves, and places the chair in front of the sofa, then the laptop on top on the chair.

"You really do need a coffee table," Hanna observes, and the detective blinks, surprised, at that. "Just a minute," he says, and goes to get a DVD from the bookshelf.

The detective sets everything up: laptop on, DVD in the slot, first episode, _play_. He goes hurriedly to turn the overhead light off and slides back into place on the sofa next to Hanna (who's shifted to sitting cross-legged, elbows propped on knees and shoulders expectantly forward). The laptop's screen is glowing along with Hanna's eyes in the darkness of the room.

Tomorrow they can pick up the search anew, but for now, they need a break, and Hanna needs cheering up. Tomorrow, they'll get back to work as P.I. and client, or even as partners, but tonight, the detective just wants to sit and watch a good TV show with a person who's fast becoming a good friend.


	3. Chapter 3

The thing about Worth is -- well, the _annoying_ thing, or at least one of the many, many annoying things -- the thing about Worth is that even when you're helping him out, he'll laugh at you and act like he's doing you the favour.

Right now Worth is in Conrad's dinky little office in the dinkiest little hospital in town. It's also nearly midnight, and while the emergency room sees a steady trickle of injuries all night, this section of the building is almost deathly quiet, but for the electric hum coming from the lights.

And, of course, Worth's voice.

"Come on, doc," he's saying, towering over Conrad like the tall fucker he is. "Let me take some excess _baggage_ offa your hands. Or out of your veins, hey?"

"You know there are live people who need this blood, right?" Conrad gripes, even as he's fishing the keys from his desk drawer. "The freezer here isn't an all-you-can-eat buffet." And then, when the second sentence sinks in, "--and neither am I! Isn't there -- god, isn't there some vampire-run blood bank?"

"The general vampire blood bank, Connie," Worth drawls, "is people. As a a doctor of people, wouldn't you prefer I take my lunch in your neat little bags than from your patients here?"

Conrad scowls and forces calm into his voice. "I know that, Worth. And you should know that threatening me, or my patients, or -- or anyone you meet in alleys -- that isn't going to make me work any faster."

He opens his office door and says, turning back to see Worth rifling through his own coat pockets, "No smoking in the hospital." Worth just grins, takes his hands out of his pockets to show them -- ta-da! -- empty of cigs or lighter, and lounges against Conrad's desk like some big jungle cat.

Conrad mutters something and hurries off to the supply area.

Vampires might not show up on security cameras, but even at this hour there were still people around, and Conrad doesn't like to take any chances. He's lucky enough that his immediate supervisor is a quarter banshee and knows that any extra supplies that go missing during Conrad's shifts are used to help members of the supernatural community. He still doesn't want to go taking a hungry vampire through the whole hospital, though, security camera footage or no.

When he's in the huge wallk-in freezer full of bloodbags and ampoules, he hesitates. There was plenty, but you never knew when there'd be an incident that required more than the usual supply. But Worth _had_ looked hungry, like he really only was eating when he came to the hospital. Conrad hates performing this kind of hypothetical triage, balancing current needs against future possibilities, and ends up only grabbing one bag of AB. (He can always come back for more later, if necessary.) Conrad locks back up after himself and heads back to his office, shoes clacking against the linoleum floor.

This time when he opens the door, Worth is sitting behind the desk, legs kicked up over the piles of paperwork. The fur-collared jacket is draped over the monitor of Conrad's work computer (an ancient PC, nothing like the Mac he has at home) and Worth's hands are laced together behind his head. Like this, Conrad can see the the bandages that wrap around Worth's arms from shoulder to wrist. What they cover is just another thing he doesn't know about Worth, just like his profession, hometown, or even his full name.

"Hi, _honey_ ," Worth says, a crumpled cigarette resting unlit between his teeth. "Bringing home the bacon? Papa would be so proud."

Conrad tries very hard to use his indoor voice when he says, "Okay, no. Okay? I'm not giving you dinner if you're gonna be a dick about it. This" -- he points at the bloodbag -- "is not because I like you. I don't. So why don't you get up, take your dinner, and we can get out of each other's hair for a few days at least."

Something about the set of Worth's shoulders makes him look lazy, like he'd never run anywhere on purpose. That means Conrad's shocked when Worth surges up out of the chair and lands barely a pace away from him; and a shocked Conrad means a Conrad trying to stifle a yelp, which in turn means Conrad bites his bottom lip, accidentally presses too hard, and ends up with a drop of blood beading on the edge of one canine. Which is stupid, Conrad's a doctor, he deals with vampires more often than he'd like, he should know what they're capable of. And fresh blood near a hungry vampire, fuck, _fuck_ , Worth hasn't been a threat so far but that doesn't mean he can trust him--

Worth's eyes flick down to Conrad's lip, then back up again. "Aw, Connie, don't you _like_ me?" he coos, in some horrible parody of affection. He slides forward half a pace, lit sharply in the fluorescent glow, and Conrad's shoulderblades are up so high in tension they're practically digging a groove into the door.

"I'm--" he begins, then winces when his voice cracks. "I don't like you, Worth, you're just one more asshole patient to deal with. Don't think you're special."

"Oh, I know I'm special," Worth says in a low, rough voice that's nearly a whisper. His pupils are dilated, probably from the feeding instinct, thinks the clinical half of Conrad's brain. The other half is shrieking really loudly like the little girl Worth would probably argue he is.

And right now the shrieking half is overriding anything else Conrad could be thinking, so he socks Worth in the jaw.

It isn't a very good punch (Conrad's too tense and there's no room for wind-up), but it still rocks Worth back a step and splits the skin over Conrad's knuckle.

"Shiiiiit," Conrad hisses. He gets out the bloodbag, warmed by now to room temperature, and shoves it at Worth. "Just -- drink this and go," he says, and tries to ignore how Worth's grinning like it's Christmas morning.

"Aw, don't be greedy," Worth says, leering in the way that always makes Worth want to take a shower, or maybe punch him again. "You're leaving me with the bagged stuff when you've got all that nice, fresh, _hot_ blood just seepin' outta ya?"

And for the second time that night, Worth moves before Conrad has a chance to react or even register the motion. His pale, bony hand wraps around Conrad's wrist, and Worth actually licks the blood off his knuckles.

It's kind of gross, and if Conrad had been able to get his hand away from Worth's freakishly strong vampire grip, he would've taken the opportunity to punch him and go find something to do in the emergency room, which is brightly lit and full of people and generally empty of vampires who might want to _eat_ him.

But as it turns out, he is trapped in his tiny locked office with a vampire who wants to eat him, and if he gets too loud a security guard might hear, and there's no way _that_ would end well, so right now Conrad's only options seem to be (a) tugging ineffectually at his wrist and (b) hissing at Worth to _fucking stop it_.

"Seriously! what the fuck!" he finds himself saying, voice raising in pitch even as he controls its volume. "Get off me, you bastard! I'm supposed to be your goddamn waiter, not the _entree_!"

Worth looks up, a smug grin spread across his face. "Looks more like the main course t'me," he says. "Never did like those distractions from the real food."

And he unbends his spine to catch at Conrad's lower lip with his teeth and suck at the dried blood there. As he does that, though, Conrad can feel Worth's grip loosen on his wrist, just enough for him to get himself free with a sharp push.

Worth stumbles back and wipes at his chin. The grin's still sitting on his face, like nothing Conrad does could possibly bother him. That look just makes Conrad madder, and the only reason he isn't strangling the vampire right now is that it wouldn't actually hurt Worth. He settles for the harshest possible glare, steps forward to push Worth back another pace, and goes to open the door. He gestures silently at the exit.

"Aeh," Worth says. "Maybe I can get used to having meals with courses after all, if you're the entree." And he tosses the bloodbag up once in the air, catches it before it has a chance to fall, and pushes past Conrad to the door. Before he leaves -- finally, thank the God Conrad doesn't believe in -- he turns back and says, "You should really watch your blood pressure. You'll have a heart attack one of these days if you aren't careful."

Conrad takes pleasure in snapping the lock on his door viciously shut before going to clean out his wounds as best he can.


End file.
